


Alea Iacta Est

by KMDWriterGrl



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate History, F/M, Post-episode--Full Disclosure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/KMDWriterGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s the story behind CJ and Hoynes … and how was Toby a part of it? A post-ep for "Full Disclosure."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alea Iacta Est

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Post-ep for “Full Disclosure.” Contains some alternate back-story of my own creation, but hopefully it’s alternate back-story that makes sense and that you’ll enjoy as well. It's both a friendship and a romance story for CJ and Toby, so you get the best of both worlds. 
> 
> A/N 2: “Alea iacta est” is Latin for “the die is cast.” Since Sorkin and Company had a habit of giving their episodes Latin names, I figured I’d come along for the ride. It’s pronounced “ah-lee-ah yahk-ta est.”

He wishes he’d insisted on giving her a ride.

He knew the trip to Hoynes’ office was only partly to send the “if you show yours we’ll damn sure show ours” message; it was a personal and painful reckoning. Rather than let her face it alone, poker-faced and stiff upper-lipped, he should have insisted on driving her there himself.

That realization is driven sharply home when he sees her sink wearily into the uncomfortable “guest” chair in her office an hour later, still wearing her coat and scarf. She looks as if someone has grabbed her and shaken her until her teeth rattle—which, metaphorically speaking, he’s rather afraid that Hoynes has. She shuts her eyes, sighs deeply, and leans back into the discomfort of the hard wood of the chair that she violently hates.

He knocks tentatively on the door although he’s sure she heard his footsteps approach… even when she seems to be in a reverie, she’s always on high alert.

“You okay?”

“No.”

Not the answer he’d been expecting. CJ doesn’t admit to being anything other than perfectly fine and in complete control, even when it’s clear that she couldn’t possibly be. In the hospital after the shooting at Rosslyn blood drying stickily on her face from a gash on her temple—“I’m okay.” On the silent limo ride back to DC after Simon Donovan’s death in New York, using his handkerchief to mop away her tears—“I’m fine.” The acknowledgement right now that, no, she isn’t okay speaks volumes about how deeply shaken she is from the meeting with Hoynes.

“Is there anything I can do?” he ventures. Not that he has any real idea of what he CAN do. Send a strongly worded letter to the former vice president? Convince the Secret Service to play fast and loose with his clearance the next time he comes to the White House?

“No.”

“Okay.” He wants to do something, even if it’s just sit here with her in the dark, but he doesn’t want to push. He never pushes with her, never insists, even when he damn well knows he should. He doesn’t play alpha male with CJ because he knows she doesn’t appreciate it; she works in a building dominated by alpha males who have no problem throwing their weight around at everyone including her because, even if she is the administration’s press secretary, she’s also female.

But he wonders sometimes if he should be more willing to push the line between “I’m letting you fight your battles” and “why don’t you let me fight them at your side?”

He turns to leave but stops when she asks quickly, “What do I need to catch up on?”

He comes all the way into her office and stands by her chair. “The President signed the school vouchers bill for DC.”

“Are you kidding? I leave the building for an hour and he switches parties?” There’s a hint of humor in her voice, which he takes as a good sign. “Do you need a press release?” And the humor’s gone that quickly, replaced by weariness.

He lays a hand on her shoulder, long enough for him to both convey his empathy and to take a measure of how tense she actually is. Her shoulder is rock hard under his fingertips. Damn. The meeting had NOT gone well.

She doesn’t need another item on her plate, so he shakes his head, makes his voice dismissive and says, “Nah, it can wait.” And then as a gentle reminder that he’s available if she decides to talk, he adds, “I’ll be in my office.”

He’s almost out the door when she blurts, suddenly, “Toby?”

“Yeah?”

She visibly struggles for words, searching and rejecting and searching again. Tension comes off of her in waves as she tries to get her thoughts in order.

He comes back inside the room and sits in the armchair across from her, waiting patiently.

“There is no night of my life I regret more than that one.”

Oh god, this is NOT the conversation he wants to have with her. Not about Hoynes. Not about that night. What actually happened in that hotel room is not his concern … although it will be, unfortunately, if CJ does come up in this tell-all book, so he guesses on some level he does need to know it. But, god, he can’t put into words just how much he dreads hearing what happened.

“You don’t have to explain it.” He hopes frantically that she’ll take him at his word but he also knows, deep down, that she won’t. She wants to explain it because Toby is the reason she left the party and went with Hoynes.

“I wish I could explain it.” She finally looks at him. “I knew he was married. I knew it.”

Of course she knew it. They all knew it. At that stage of the campaign everyone knew everything about each other. There was no hope of privacy for anyone—not the candidates, not the families, not the staffers. It was an absurd, almost obscene, level of intimacy that they all shared because they were together nearly every waking moment, practically in each other’s back pockets.

It was during the intense closeness of that campaign that the friendship he and CJ had developed plunged into something much deeper. They’d worked together day in and day out for weeks on end, the two of them staying up well beyond the time when most of the others went to bed, working the message, spinning and molding the language, making it come alive. When they were most in tune with each other they could practically read other’s minds, anticipating what needed to be said and the nuance it needed to be said with. It was electrifying to know each other that well, to be able to read each other in that way; it was, CJ told him during a delirious 2:30am confession, the most wholly intimate connection she’d ever felt with someone.

So, of course they made love that night. There was no doubt it was going to happen. Not after that confession. Not after seeing her stretched out on her stomach on the bed in his hotel room, her head on her arms, a notepad full of sentences and cross-outs and smudges near her hand, her white shirt open just enough at the neck for him to get a look at the creamy smooth skin of her collarbone. He and Andi had been going through another of their “fight, fuck, but ultimately fizzle” stages and had both signed divorce papers prior to the start of the campaign; he was lonely, yes, but it wasn’t loneliness that drove him to bend over the bed and capture CJ’s lips with his—it was the intense arousal of knowing that this beautiful woman “got him” more completely, more thoroughly, and more genuinely than his ex-wife ever had.

For two weeks they devoured each other every chance they got, whether it was in her room or his or, in one incredibly fevered instance, in the darkened ballroom where the candidates would be performing speeches the next day. They memorized each other’s bodies … he still knows the location of both her small tattoos, of the birthmark on her thigh … and learned each other’s rhythms. She was vocal in bed and he loved listening to her moan. He knew her favorite pair of panties were soft purple lace and that they didn’t survive one vigorous night of lovemaking when he ripped them off her body, so frenzied was he to lose himself in the heat of her. He knew he could make her nearly climax on the spot if he forcefully nipped at the side of her neck while they were making love; he wondered idly if Danny or anyone else she dated knew that about her. He developed a habit that he still kept to this day of tracking her with his eyes whenever she was in the room. It was a primal, powerful, and, above all, protective urge … she was his, just as he was hers, and by god he was going to take care of her.

And then one night she suddenly wasn’t his. Andi arrived at a Bartlett event to show her support for the candidate, though Toby mistook her support for Bartlett as support for, well, him. With too much alcohol in his bloodstream, too much nostalgia and longing for his ex-wife rising in his stomach, he took Andi outside onto the patio and begged her to come back to him, finally taking her in his arms and kissing her … at the same moment that CJ walked onto the patio looking for him, the clichéd textbook example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Back at the party, shaking, angry, buzzed but not so buzzed that she didn’t know full well exactly what she was doing, she offered a winning smile to John Hoynes, who had been giving her far too much personal attention over the last few months. When Hoynes discreetly whispered his room number in her ear on his way out of the ballroom, it wasn’t a hard decision to make; with Toby anxiously watching her every move, she took the next elevator up behind the future vice-president.

It all washes over Toby in a hot, agonizing wave. Of all the idiotic things he had done in his life, losing CJ the way that he’d lost her had been the penultimate one.

They’d rebuilt their relationship bit by bit, of course, letting the level of trust and warmth deepen with every successive year. The almost preternatural intimacy is still there; it’s something that they’ll always share. The looks they give each other, the teasing, the flirting, attest to that. But CJ’s tamped the fire down and he, out of consideration to her, has followed suit.

Her eyes are deeply sad and uncertain. He wants more than anything to take her face in his hands.

“I always thought women who do that …” The words trail off. He knows what she thinks of women who do that … and knows, too, that she is fighting against the knowledge that she keeps pushed out of the way that she IS one of those women who ‘do that.’

She meets his eyes. “If I could take back one moment of my life it would be getting on that elevator.” She struggles for words, searching for something more adequate and expressive, before finally and simply saying, “I’m sorry.”

God, he wants to touch her face so badly. Instead he just says, as sincerely as he can, “You don’t have to apologize to me.”

In fact, he really ought to be the one apologizing to her. Although he and CJ are both mature enough to admit that each person is responsible for their own actions, there’s still a part of him that knows that she would never have gone to Hoynes if he hadn’t desperately tried to go back to Andi.

“I don’t have anyone else I can apologize to.”

She raises a hand as if she might want to touch him … his face, his shoulder, something … a touch he would certainly welcome at this juncture … then simply says, “I’ll come back to your office in a few minutes and we can work on the release.”

He nods, rises. She needs time, even if it’s just a few moments to gather herself, and god knows he does too. Their shared history is threatening to overwhelm him.

“Sure,” he replies, touching her shoulder again, and leaves.

Dammit, he REALLY should have given her a ride.

***

Toby swims up from sleep to the sound of the phone. Although it could have been anyone at this hour—the White House, Andi, his brother—he knows it’s CJ on the phone. After the day she’s had, she’ll be fighting insomnia and he’s always been her companion of choice for sleepless nights.

“Hey,” he says into the phone.

“Hi.” Her voice is hesitant. “Look, I … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you.”

He chuckles … it’s her normal opening line.

“But now that I AM awake, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Toby, I’m …I feel like I maybe ought to take some time …or resign.”

He sits up in bed, alarmed. What the hell is this? Best tread carefully. “Can you tell me why you feel that way?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious.” Her voice is flat.

“Well, you DID just wake me up so …” When she doesn’t respond, he says, “CJ, why do you think you need to do something so drastic?”

“Because the story is going to get out. That ‘oops, I fucked up’ list that we sent to Hoynes isn’t going to keep him from presenting everything he’s got or pretends he’s got and that includes all of the stuff about me. It’s going to ruin my reputation which is going to sully the President’s. So I think it’s better if--”

“Whoa, CJ, hold on.” She’s speaking so quickly that the words are tumbling over one another, her usual careful elocution tossed to the wayside by sleeplessness and temper and, yes, he can hear it in her voice, tears. “Listen to me.”

“—if I just go ahead and start drafting a resignation letter …”

“CJ.”

“You can train Will to …”

“CJ!”

“It isn’t going to affect …”

“Claudia.” Just her first name, which he only ever uses when he’s deadly serious about something or when they’re in the midst of making love. “I want you to stop for a second and listen to me.”

“Okay.” Her voice is quiet.

“I’m going to get in my car and drive over there, okay? If we’re going to talk about this, it needs to be face to face. I want to be able to see you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“It’s pretty clear to me that I do. So I’m on my way. I’ll be there in 10 minutes, okay? Watch for me.”

It’s about time, he thinks as he pulls on pants, that he played alpha male and insisted.

***

By the time he gets to her townhouse she’s in full-blown self-recrimination mode. She’s sitting on the couch drafting a letter of resignation on a yellow legal pad when he uses his extra key (she has one to his place, too) to come inside.

“It’s better for everyone if I just leave. It’s embarrassing enough what he’s said about all of you without having all of the sordid details about me coming out of the wood work.”

“You know that isn’t necessary.” He sits down beside her on the couch and takes the pen right out of her hand.

“Isn’t it? Do YOU want to hear what he has to say about that night?”

“I absolutely don’t. But I don’t think he’ll resort to that. There have been other women, CJ; everyone knows it. They’ll come forward, too.”

CJ throws the notepad aside and sinks back on the couch. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I told him.”

Toby listens, though he too sinks back against the couch and turns his body to face hers. “What did you tell him?”

CJ describes her threat to expose “nothing but the truth” about John Hoynes and his virtual harem of other women. By the time she finishes, Toby wants to uncharacteristically break into a war whoop of triumph. He just grins and says, “There’s the Claudia Jean I know so well.”

“But what if it’s not enough? He’s got more to gain from the book than he has to lose from anything I have to say about the other women. You know the double standard—men who cheat make their one time apologies and continue to swagger around before going out and doing it again; women are labeled tramps and whores and are never taken seriously after that. He CAN say it and knowing Hoynes I’m betting that at some point he will say it.” She drops her head in her hands. “God, I’m SUCH an idiot. I’ve worked too hard to lose everything now because of one stupid mistake.”

“CJ …” Now he does touch her, laying a gentle hand on the back of her neck and squeezing to work the tension out. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. It’s done. And now we’re going to deal with it, whatever ‘it’ turns out to be. But you cannot sit here and agonize. You’re only hurting yourself.”

He rubs his thumb up and down the hollow at the base of her skull; even with a decade between the last time that he touched her like this and now, he still remembers all the places she’s most sensitive.

She doesn’t move away from his hand, nor does she relax into it, but she does chuckle a little. “You quoted Shakespeare to make me feel better? Pretentious much?”

“Actually it was ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.’”

“Oh, that’s MUCH less pretentious.”

“I never claimed not to be.” He keeps working her neck as he speaks. “This administration needs you, CJ. There is no better person to speak for this White House than you. You have a credibility and strength of character unmatched by any press secretary so far. If Hoynes takes a swing at you, there’s no way he’s going to knock you down … all he’s going to do is look like an idiot for having tried. You have the entire White House standing behind you. Don’t take that for granted.”

Now she does relax into his hand with a profound sigh. “I feel like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Don’t. Inasmuch as I hate to admit it, Hoynes does have friendly feelings toward you and I bet that’s going to work to your advantage. I don’t think he’s intentionally gunning for you. You were one of many women, CJ … I think that’s going to work to your advantage.”

“But I’m the only one who has real power.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that. You don’t know who else slept with Hoynes to hoist her way up the ladder.” Too late, he realizes what he’s implying and wishes he could take it back.

CJ goes tense against his hand. “That’s not why I did it, you know.” She doesn’t sound angry, just sad.

“I know,” he replies softly.

“I did it because … hell, I don’t know why.”

“You do know. And so do I. And it’s better to leave it there, don’t you think?”

“I loved you so much,” she murmurs. “At least tell me you knew that.”

“I know.” She hasn’t pulled away from him yet, so he lightly strokes her hair. “I loved you too.” He pushes her hair away from the back of her neck and lays a gentle kiss there. “I still do, Claudia Jean. I always will. Nothing is going to keep me from loving you with everything in me.”

“Not even Andi?”

“Am I with Andi right now? No. I’m with you in your condo in the middle of the night. I’m here with you because you’re my best friend and you’re wide awake and agonizing over things you can’t control and you need me—or I hope to god you need me-- to help you through this. Do I love you, Claudia Jean? Good Lord, do I!”

She turns to him then and touches the side of his face, a warm, soft touch that he’s wanted since the night he lost her through his own stupidity. Her eyes are tired and sad but there’s a spark in them that gives him hope. “Toby …”

“It’s going to be fine,” he says firmly, stroking her hair again with a more assured touch. “Anything that comes at us, we’ll get through together.”

She puts her arms around him and leans against his chest, for comfort more than seduction, and the warmth of her body is so familiar that it nearly takes his breath away. “Promise me,” she says, her words nearly lost in the material of his shirt.

He presses his lips to her temple and murmurs into her hair, “I promise.”

END


End file.
